


Not Enough

by Dira Sudis (dsudis)



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Episode: s05e22 The Gift, Grief
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-07-05
Updated: 2010-07-05
Packaged: 2017-10-10 09:56:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,735
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/98382
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dsudis/pseuds/Dira%20Sudis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Spike and Dawn have a routine.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Not Enough

**Author's Note:**

> This story was first posted February 1, 2003.

At sundown, he comes to the shop, where she's been hanging out for most of the day. He watches while she gathers up her things, books for her summer school classes, nail polish, whatever odd little gifts the gang have showered on her today. He holds out his hand, and she gives him her bag, and he nods to whoever's there, whoever's been minding her in the daylight while he slept and dreamed of her and her sister. They nod back, don't say anything; they know that she's the conduit, that she tells him whatever he needs to know. If there's something truly important to tell him, there will be a note, tucked into her assignment book, where he'll find it when he goes through her bag to see she's done her homework. They walk back to her home, and if she's having a good day she'll talk. He's never very conversational, it's always early for him, but she's used to that, and he just walks beside her, takes her in; by the time they reach the house he knows just how the day's gone, no matter how much or little she talks, no matter what she talks about.

Once home, they go into the kitchen together and make dinner; if it's been a bad day, he puts stuff together for both of them while she sits and watches, her bowl of soup (heated in a pot on the stovetop, like real food) or sandwich (on a plate, like real food) or whatever takes fewer than five minutes of prep time, along with his mug of blood, with cereal stirred in if there's any handy and it's not the last of the box. Can't be depriving a growing girl of her breakfast. They eat there, sitting on stools at the counter side-by-side. Whatever she doesn't finish, he eats. Dinnertime is his turn to talk, not that he ever really has anything new to talk about, as his existence is not even enlivened as hers is by the daily spectacle of summer school. Still, with a hundred-odd years of life story behind him, he generally finds something to spout off about, without mentioning his dreams, or his solitary graveside visits, or patrolling, or anything that relates too directly to _her_. Buffy. His love, her sister, the center of their worlds. Who is gone. Leaving them with just each other to look after.

After dinner, they wash the dishes, as if it were necessary, as if there were two sets of dishes from two people eating like humans, as if the preparation of the meal had been so elaborate that the mess must be cleaned up immediately and it takes both of them to do it. Washing the dishes can occupy as much as twenty minutes, with her washing one plate, one fork, one cup and one mug with minute care. He dries them just as carefully. They listen to the radio. This is the part where they both start to talk; one of them will sing along with something, and the other will be disgusted by their incomprehensible taste in music, and in time the dishes are done.

That is the routine.

After the dishes, the routine is weaker. Any number of things might happen, depending on whether it's a school night, whether his trawl through her backpack reveals anything that needs attending to, whether he decides to make her actually do the homework or just makes her write the answers he dictates, whether there's anything good to watch on the telly, whether one of them gets all soppy and starts thinking about Buffy, and the other has to come to the rescue with some conversational tangent or challenge of video game prowess. The witches come home, sometime after the dishes are done and before sunrise, and that's another variable. Sometimes he has to go patrol, sometimes he stays the night. Sometimes he does her nails. On Tuesdays they go out to the grave together, and get ice cream after.

The routine makes things simple. The days slip by, friction-free, and their time spent together is the most serene part of that for both of them. She feels closer to safe with him than with anyone else, and he feels almost like a man, when he protects her from the evil specters of malnutrition and bad grades. He thinks sometimes that it's a kind of love, but so quiet and calm that it's like no other love he's ever felt; there's no fire, no madness, but a kind of stillness, a steadiness like stone or earth. He thinks sometimes about family, about him and Dru and Darla and Angelus, but also about his dimly recalled human family, his mum. He tries not to think about Buffy, or her mother, but they're family too, her family. As lost to her as his families are to him. He never thinks about what it all means.

And then comes a night like every other night. They are washing the dishes, pretending that it's necessary like they always do. Spike teases Dawn for her Backstreet Boys fixation, even though he too knows all the words to the song on the radio and can sing the middle harmony part pitch-perfect. He does, softly, on the last chorus, and she smiles, which makes the indignity worthwhile. He puts the dishes away, closes the cupboard, and, there, routine time is over. She stays standing by the sink while he goes to the counter to look through her bag, instead of going to the living room and turning on the telly, which means she knows he's going to find something in there. He checks the pockets, but the contents are the usual: makeup, chewing gum, the same pack of smokes with the same two missing, and the same sparkly purple lighter. He leaves everything where it is and opens the main part of the bag. The textbooks are the usual assortment, the same ones she totes back and forth every day as summer school doesn't come with a locker. He stacks them neatly in size order, lower left corners aligned, and picks up her assignment book, flips it open to the current page.

_English: read chapters 3&amp;4 buffy is dead choose topic for essay  
Math: p.124 buffy #1-31 is (odd) never answers coming in back_

Spike doesn't say a word, just sets down the little notebook and extracts her math text from the stack. Tucked in at page 124 is a neatly folded sheet, assigned problems arranged in tidy rows. She even showed her work, instead of just copying the answers from the back, so apparently he won't have to struggle over learning the concepts himself to help her cram the night before the test. Good girl.

"Spike?"

He makes sure the stack of books is again perfect before looking up at her. "Yeah," is as far as he gets, when he sees the tears on her face. She didn't make a sound. Not so much as a hitch in her quiet breathing as she stood there, but now she's all in tears.

The thing is, there's an understanding. He grieves alone, which frequently entails drinking. She, being a little girl, grieves with all the others. Never with each other, they don't do this. It's not quiet, it's not peaceful, and they both need the quiet and the peace. So he'll show the assignment book to Red or her girlfriend when one of them gets in, after Dawn's in bed, and they'll handle it. It's not supposed to go like this.

He picks up her paperback copy of _The Scarlet Letter_ instead. "This essay, is it just on the bits you've already read, or the whole thing?"

"Spike!"

He looks up at her and he knows he's being stubborn and heartless but this is _not_ the arrangement. They lock stares for a moment, but he knows she's going to win. Bloody hell, he can't say no.

"All right, then. What's up?"

Her little hands are clenched into little fists, and he thinks about how long it's been since a girl punched him as hard as she could, square in the face, just because she needed someone to hit. He sets the book down and moves closer to her, closer still. He's in her space, still hasn't said anything, and she looks all broken and he's pretty sure he's doing this wrong, but what the hell, he's just the sitter.

"You wanna talk, Bit? Or you just wanna write little melodramatic messages in your notebooks? Cos you don't need me for that, there are plenty of more receptive audiences."

She's shaking, shuddering as the tears pour down her face, but her face is fierce and still she's not making a sound. "I hate you," is what she finally whispers, and he's not surprised she says it, but he's surprised to find it hurts.

He leans closer, and she's taller than her sister but still small enough for him to loom over. "Oh, honestly, at least come up with something original."

The fists come up a little and he forces himself not to smile, not to even think of smiling. She's getting the idea now, and she's not as strong as Buffy but he's pretty sure her sister taught her how to throw a punch.

"I hate you. I hate having you here when she's dead. Coming here, watching after me like you even care, and I know, okay? I know what you're doing and I _hate you_." She breaks into screaming on the last two words, an assault on his vampiric senses, but still no fists, so he holds his ground and waits for it.

"You know what I'm doing, do you, Bit? What am I doing, then?" He puts just enough taunt into it, not so much that it might just be the teasing posturing they engage in so often, but enough to be cruel, to knock her off balance.

"You love her, she's dead and still you love her and you just follow me around like you can still get to her, like, like maybe _I'm_ her, like I inherited you, you sick fuck!"

He pops an eyebrow, and she breaks finally, shoves against him with open hands, and he lets her rock him back a step when she puts her back into it. She lunges after him and now, now, finally, the fists come out and she's pummeling randomly, so if Buffy ever taught her how to plant a nice solid left in a guy's brow she doesn't remember it at the moment. She's still screaming at him, too, and crying.

"I hate you you only want her even when she's dead and I'm still here, she's still the one you care about and I'm still just some thing you can do for her but I'm not her you'll never get her now you idiot and I can't replace her I can't I can't--"

And he figures that's about enough, now that she's torn his shirt and split his lip, so he catches her fists, wrapping one hand around each, and holds her still on the opposite side of the empty space framed by his arms and hers.

"So," he says, while she stands there, chest heaving, breath coming in ragged sobs. "You hate me." Her face crumples under his scrutiny and she ducks her head to get away from looking at him, struggles half-heartedly against his grip on her hands, but he doesn't let her go.

"I'm not her either, you know," he says finally, to the neat part in her shiny hair, and that brings her head up again, and he's looking straight into her eyes, blue and bloodshot and full of tears. "Here I am, checking your homework and feeding you dinner, going out and fighting the good fight, but I can't replace her anymore than you can."

Dawn shudders, and her lips move around the shape of _hate you_, but no sound comes out.

"She's gone," he says, quietly if not exactly softly. "And she's not coming back. And you and me, we loved her and now we've got nothing but this," and he nodded toward the gap between them. "This emptiness in common. It's not pretty so we don't talk about it."

Dawn jerks her hands free, reaches out to obliterate the empty space, touches the torn collar of his shirt. "It's not enough," she says quietly. "It won't ever be, will it? I won't ever be enough for you and you won't ever be enough for me, and we'll both just always have this."

Spike reaches out too, runs a hand lightly over her soft shiny hair. "Yeah," he says quietly. "We'll always have this."

 

* * *

"There's this dream I have, where I... didn't let her die. I turned her, instead of letting her die. That part's never in the dream. In the dream, I'm sitting on the couch, and you're upstairs in bed, and she walks on in, and I just know, what I did, what she is. And she's... she's come to kill you. She's so beautiful and strong, so cold and eternal. She kisses me, she tells me that she has just this one last loose end to tidy up and then we can go away together, terrorize the world cos there's no slayer to stop us."

He stops for so long that she thinks that might be all there is to tell, or all he can bear to tell her, but she asks anyway. "What do you do?"

He sighs, runs a hand through his hair. "Kill her, don't I? Every bloody time, without even a second thought I pick up a stake and put it straight through her heart. Only she doesn't dust, just falls down dead, and then there you are on the stairs, and screaming that she wasn't a vamp, that she was risen from the dead and I killed her, that it's all my fault she's dead this time, really all my fault, and you won't believe that I only did it for you. And then I wake up."

"But--"

He laughs.

"No, I mean, yay for saving me from harm, but, honestly, why?"

There's silence, and she can see his fingers twitching for the cigarettes he's not allowed to smoke inside.

"It wouldn't be her. Nothing that wanted you dead could have a shred of her in it. Might look like her, but it'd be further from the real thing than that bot. And I owe it to the real Buffy, the one I promised, to keep you safe. Even if..." He's said too much, falls silent too late. "Don't know why I'm telling you this."

She settles her hips back against the counter, her hands gripping the edge to either side. "So, even then, it's all about her? The real her?" She doesn't sound angry now, just sad. It's not so strange, not a shock, and tonight they're letting it all out.

But something makes him move closer, closer, much closer than he's really allowed to be. Something makes him put his hands on her, boost her up so she's sitting on the counter, so they're eye to eye. "No," he says quietly, his hands still resting on her hips, her hands still flat on the counter. "Look, Buffy's gone, there's no her for it to be about. She only exists anymore cos she's part of you, part of me, cos we loved her and we're still here. That's who it's about, Dawn. You. And me."

She doesn't seem scared; trusts him or at least trusts the chip. She rakes her teeth over her lower lip. "Really?"

He leans closer still, touches his smooth forehead to hers. "Really," he whispers, and the breath of the word is exhaled onto her lips and he shifts and tilts and kisses her, that soft, that gentle. Just so she knows. Her lips part under his, maybe an invitation or just surprise, but she's kissing him back, awkward and uncertain but so horribly sweet. He tastes her lower lip, the salt, the hint of blood where the skin is broken, and then he breaks the contact, steps back.

She's staring at him, wide-eyed, and he smiles a little, so she'll know that he was only just making things clear, that nothing has changed. "Now," he says, "about your homework."


End file.
